Winds Of Fate

*Chapter Eight DARKWIND

"Stupid," said Vree, with profound disapproval.

Darkwind's stomach lurched as Vree made another swooping dive-not quite a stoop-skimming through the pocket valley that held the trapped dyheli bucks.

There were times when the gyre's viewpoint was a little-unsettling.

The gyre wheeled above the dyheli herd, just above the highest level of the mist, giving Darkwind the loan of his keener eyes and the advantage of wings and height. "Stupid, stupid. We should go." Not that Darkwind needed a bird, even a bondbird, to tell him that.

The gentle dyheli huddled together in an exhausted, witless knot, too spent by panic to do anything sensible.

Through the gyre's eyes he looked for anything that might pass as a track out of the valley-and found nothing. The spring dropped from a height five times that of the dyheli to the valley floor, down a sheer rock face. The other two sides of the valley were just as sheer, and sandstone to boot.

Nothing short of a miracle was going to get them out of there.

Vree's right. We should go. I can't risk all of k'sheyna for the sake of a dozen dyheli. I made pledges, I have greater responsibilities.

So why was he here, lying under the cover of a bush, just above the mist-choked passage out of the dead-end valley, searching through his bondbird's eyes for a way out for the tiny herd? Why was he wasting his time, leaving his section of the border unpatrolled, tearing up his insides with his own helplessness?

Because I'm stupid.

One of the bucks raised a sweat-streaked head to utter a heartbreaking cry of despair. His gut twisted a little more.

And because I can't stand to see them suffering like that. they're fellow creatures, as intelligent as we are. they looked to Dawnfire for protection and help, even if they did range outside our boundaries. they acted as her eyes and ears out here. I can't just abandon them now.

Which was, no doubt, exactly the way Dawnfire felt. There was no difference in what he was doing now, and what she wanted to do.

Except that I'm a little older, a little more experienced. But just as headstrong and stupid.

The mist-whatever it was-rose and fell with an uneasy, wave-like motion, and wherever it lapped up on the rock wall, it left brown and withered vegetation when it receded. And it took quite a bit to kill those tough little rock-plants. So the mist was deadly to the touch as well as deadly to breathe. There was no point in trying to calm the dyheli enough to get them to hold their breath and make a dash for freedom... they'd never survive being in the mist for as long as it would take them to blunder through.

As if to underscore that observation, the mist lapped a little higher just below his hiding place. A wisp of it eddied up, and he got a faint whiff of something that burned his mouth and throat and made his eyes water. He coughed it out as the mist ebbed again.

Poisonous and caustic. First, burns to madden them further, then the poison.

They're horribly susceptible to poisons; they'd probably get fatal doses just through skin contact, through the area of the burn.

No, no hope there.

He rubbed his eyes to clear them, and sent Vree to perch in the tree over his head. Another of the dyheli called mournfully, and the cry cut into his heart. He knuckled his eyes again, blinking through burning eyes, but still could see no way out of the trap.

Even the spring-fed waterfall was not big enough to do more than provide a little water spray and a musical trickle down the rocks. There was no shelter for even one of the dyheli behind it.

I can't bear this, he decided, finally. All I could do is shoot them and give them a painless death, or leave them, and hope that whatever this poison is, it disperses on its own-or maybe won't be able to get past the mist that the waterfall is throwing.

Two choices, both bad, the second promising a worse death than the first. His heart smoldered with frustration and anger, and he swore and pounded his fist white on the rock-hard dirt, then wiped the blood off his skinned knuckles. No! Dammit, it's not fair, they depended on Tayledras to protect them! their has to be somethhe looked back into the valley, at the tugging of an invisible current, a stirring in the fabrics of power, the rest of his thought forgotten.

A sudden shrwing along his nerves, an etching of ice down his backbone, that was what warned him of magic-magic that he knew, intimately, though he no longer danced to its piping-the movements of energies nearby, and working swiftly.

His fingers moved, silently, in unconscious response. He swung his head a little, trying to pinpoint the source. there-the mist below him stirred.

The hair on the back of his neck and arms stood on end, and he found himself on his feet on the floor of the valley before the wall of mist, with no memory of standing, much less climbing down. It didn't matter; magic coiled and sprang from a point somewhere before him, purposeful, and guided.

Striking against the mage-born wall of poison.

The mist writhed as it was attacked, stubbornly resisting. Magic, a single spell, fought the mist, trying to force it to disperse. The mist fought back with magic and protections of its own. It curdled, thickened, compacted against the sides and floor of the valley, flowing a little farther toward the dyheli.

The spell changed; power speared through the mist, cutting it, lance-like.

A clear spot appeared, a kind of tunnel in the cloud. The mist fought again, but not as successfully this time.

Darkwind felt it all, felt the conflicting energies in his nerves and bones. He didn't have to watch the silent battle, he followed it accurately within himself-the spell-wielder forcing the mist away, the mist curling back into the emptying corridor, being forced away, and oozing back in again. He reached out a hand, involuntarily, to wield power that he had forsaken Then pulled his hand back, the conflict within him as silent and devastating as the conflict below him.

But before he could resolve his own battle, the balance of power below him shifted. The magic-wielder won; the mist parted, held firmly away from a clear tunnel down the middle of the valley, with only the thinnest of wisps seeping in.

But he could feel the strain, the pressure of the mist on the walls of that tunnel, threatening to collapse it at any moment.

It can't hold for long!

But again, before he could move, the balance shifted. The ground trembled under his feet, and for a moment he thought it was another effect of the battle of mist and magic being fought in front of his very eyes. But no-something dark loomed through the enshrouding mist, something that tossed and made the ground shake.

The dyheli!

Now he dared a thought, a Mindspoken call It didn't matter that someone or something might overhear; they had been started, or spooked, but without direction, they might hesitate, fatally. "Brothers-hooved brothers! Come, quickly, before the escape-way closes!" There was no answer except the shaking of the ground. But the darkness within the mist began to resolve into tossing heads and churning legs-and a moment later, the dyheli bucks pounded into sight, a foam of sweat dripping from their flanks, coughing as the fumes hit their lungs. And behind them-something else.

Something that ran on two legs, not four.

It collapsed, just barely within the reach of the mist. And as it collapsed, so did the tunnel of clear air.

He did not even stop to think; he simply acted.

He took a lungful of clean air and plunged into the edge of the roiling, angry mist. His eyes burned and watered, his skin was afire. He could hardly see through the tears, only enough to reach that prone figure, seize one arm, and help it to its feet.

He half-dragged, half-carried it out, aware of it only as lighter than he, and shorter, and still alive, for it tried feebly to help him. There was no telling if it was human or not; here in the borderland between k'sheyna and the Pelagirs, that was not something to take for granted.

But it had saved the dyheli, and that was enough to earn it, in turn, aid.

The mist reached greedily for them; he reached clear air at the edge of it; sucked in a lungful, felt his burden do the same. Both of them shuddered with racking coughs as a wisp of mist reached their throats.

He stumbled into safety at the same moment that the other collapsed completely, nearly carrying Darkwind to the ground with him.

Him?

At that moment, Darkwind realized that this was no male. And as he half-suspected, not human either.

"Run!.. Vree screamed from overhead, with mind and voice, and Darkwind glanced behind to see the mist licking forward again, reaching for them, turning darker as if with anger.

From somewhere he found the strength to pick her up, heave her over his shoulder, and stumble away at a clumsy run.

He ran until exhaustion forced him to stop before he dropped the girl, fell on his face, or both. Vree scouted for him, as he slowed to a weary walk, muscles burning, side aching. He figured he must have run, all out, for furlongs at least; he was well out of sensing range of the evil mist, if that still existed and had not been dissipated. That was all that mattered. By the time he came to a halt, in the lee of a fallen tree, he was sweating as heavily as the dyheli bucks.

He knelt and eased his burden down into the grass beside the barks-tripped trunk of the tree, and didn't bother to get up. He sat right down beside her, his legs without any strength at all, propping himself against the tree with his back against the trunk.

For a long time he just sat there, his forehead against his bent knees, wrists crossed over his ankles, every muscle weak from the long run, relying on Vree to alert him if anything dangerous came along. Sweat cooled and dried, his back and scalp itched, but he was too tired to scratch them. He was only aware of his burning muscles, his aching lungs, the pain in his side.

After a while, other things began to penetrate to his consciousness as his legs stopped trembling and the pain in his side and lungs ebbed.

Birds called and chattered all around, a good sign, since they would have been silent if there had been anything about to disturb them.

He began to think again, slowly. His mind, dull with fatigue, was nevertheless alert enough to encompass this much; as a nonhuman and an Outlander, she was not going to be welcome in k'sheyna. She was not, as he recalled from the brief glimpse he'd had before he had to pick up and run with her, a member of any of the nonhuman races k'sheyna had contact with. And unknown meant "suspect" in the danger-ridden lands beyond the borders of the Vale.

Now what am I going to do with her? he wondered, exhaustion warring with the need to make a quick decision. I'd better take a closer look at her. We aren't inside the Vale yet. If she isn't badly hurt, maybe I can just leave her here, keep an eye on her until she comes around, then make sure she takes herself off, away from the Vale.

He raised his head and turned his attention to his silent companion-still unconscious, he saw. As he turned her over to examine her, everything about her set off ripples of aversion.

Not only was she nonhuman, she was only-too-obviously one of the so-called " Changechildren" from the Pelagirs, creatures modified from either human or animal bases-at their own whims, frequently, if the base was human; or that of their creators if they were modified from animals. It was what the Tayledras had done with the bondbirds, and what they had done to horses on behalf of the Shin'a'in, taken to an extreme. An extreme that many Tayledras found bordering on the obscene-perhaps because of the kinds of modifications that had been done at the time of the Mage Wars. It was one thing to modify; it was quite another to force extreme changes for no good reason, be the base human or animal.

His experienced eye told him which it was; there was only so much that could be done with an animal base. You couldn't grant equal intelligence with humans to an animal, except over the course of many generations.

It had taken the hertasi many generations to attain enough intelligence for a rare mage to appear among their ranks, and that event itself had been centuries ago. Human base, modified to cat...Even unconscious, she oozed sexual attraction, which made him both doubly uneasy and pitying. That attraction-it was a common modification, based on smell and the stimulation of deep, instinctual drives in the onlooker.

Whether he decided ultimately on pity or revulsion would depend on whether she'd had it done to her, or done it herself. If herself-Already he felt a deep, smoldering anger at the idea. I may pitch her back into the damned mist.

Those who modified themselves for sexual attractiveness were generally doing so with intent to use themselves and their bodies as a weapon.

And not an honest one, either.

On the other hand, if she'd had it done to her-it was likely with the intent of her master to use her as a kind of sexual pet. That was as revolting to Darkwind as the first, but it was not a revulsion centered on the girl.

For the rest, the overall impression was of a cat, or something catlike.

Her hair was a dark, deep sable, and rather short, with a subtle dappled effect in the direct sunlight, like his own dyed hair-camouflage.

Her face was triangular, with very little chin; her ears, pointed, with furlike tufts on the ends. Her eyebrows swept upward, her eyes were slanted upward, and when he pulled an eyelid open to see if she really was conscious, he was unsurprised to see that her golden-yellow eyes had slit pupils. Which were dilated in shock; her stunned condition was real.

She wore the absolute minimum for modesty; a scanty tunic of creamcolored leather, and skin-tight breeches that laced up the side, showing a long line of dark golden-brown flesh beneath. Not practical garb for woods running.

Even unconscious, she lay with a boneless grace that echoed the cat theme, and her retractile fingernails were filed to sharp points, like a cat's claws.

Whatever she had been, she was not even as human now as the Tayledras.

The changes had been made to her from birth; possibly even before. In fact, in view of the extensiveness of the changes, it was increasingly unlikely that she'd done them to herself. Unless she was born in one of the contaminated areas, the poison twisted her in this direction, and she decided to continue the shift.

She was barefoot, but the tough soles of her feet convinced him that she had spent most of her life without wearing foot coverings. Again, not practical for woods running, which argued that she had run away from something or someone.

Then he saw the patterns of old and new bruises over much of her body, as if someone had been beating her on a regular basis. Nothing to mar the pert perfection of her face-but everywhere else, she was marked with the signs of frequent blows. The darkness of her skin had hidden it from him at first, but she was covered with the greenish-yellow of old, healing bruises, and the purple-black of fresh ones. Some of them, on her arms, were as big as the palm of his hand. He could only wonder, sickened, about the parts of her hidden under her clothing. The evidence was mounting in her favor.

She was thin-too thin, with bones showing starkly, as if she never had quite enough to eat.

Darkwind sat back on his heels, no longer certain what to think. The Changechild was a bundle of contradictions. If she was, as she seemed, the escaped chattel of an Adept-level mage, how was it she had commanded the power to free the dyheli herd? No mage would have permitted a "pet" to carry the Mage-Gift, much less learn how to use it.

But if she was an enemy, why did she bear the marks of beatings and semistarvation? And why had she freed the herd in the first place?

She represented a puzzle he did not have enough information to solve.

I have to give her the benefit of the doubt, he decided, after pondering the question for a moment. She did save the dyheli. Whatever else she is, or is not will have to wait. But I can't make a decision until I know what she is. He thought a moment more. I have to see that she stays safe until she wakes. I do owe her that much, at the very least-and I owe her the protection of a place to recover afterward.

At a guess, she hadn't breathed enough of the poison to have put a healthy creature into the unconscious stupor she lingered in. But she had not been healthy, and she had depleted her resources considerably in fighting that evil mist. She was not Adept-level; that much was obvious.

She was not even a Master; no Master would have exhausted herself in fighting the mist directly. A Master would have transmuted the mist into something else; an Adept would have broken the spell creating it and holding it there. Both would have involved very powerful and difficult spells and would have alerted every mage within two days' ride that there was another mage plying his powers. That was what Darkwind would have done-before he swore that nothing would ever induce him to wield magic energies again. Before it became too dangerous for him to draw the attentions of other Adepts to the depleted and disrupted Clan of k'sheyna.

She had not-probably could not-either break or change the spell.

She could only fight it. That meant she was Journeyman at best, and that the energy to create the tunnel of safety had come directly from her. It was what made journeymen so hard to track; since the only disturbances in the energy-flows of mage-energies were those within themselves, they couldn't be detected unless one was very nearby. And, thank the fourfold Goddess, that was what had kept her magics from attracting anything else. Probably he had been the only creature close enough to detect her meddling.

But that was also what limited a journeyman's abilities to affect other magic, and limited his magical "arsenal') as well. When the energy was gone, the mage was exhausted, sometimes to the point of catatonia depending on how far he wanted to push himself, and there was no more until he was rested.

That was what brought the Changechild to this pass; depleting herself, on top of her poor physical condition, then taking one whiff too many of the poison mist. She might be a long time in recovering.

But Darkwind could not, in all conscience, leave her where she was. it wasn't safe, and he could not spare anyone to protect her. And even if it was safe, she might not recover without help; he didn't know enough of Healing to tell.

He rested his chin on his knee and thought.

I need someplace and someone willing to watch her and keep her out of mischief. But I can't take her into the Vale; Father would slit her throat just for looking the way she does. I need a neutral safe-haven, temporarily-and then I need a lot of good advice.

He knew where to find the second; it was coming up with the first that was difficult.

Finally with a tentative plan in mind, he hefted her over his shoulder again-with a stern admonition to his body to behave in her proximity, as her sexual attraction redoubled once he was close to her.

His body was not interested in listening.

Finally, in desperation, he shielded-everything. And thought of the least arousing things he could manage-scrubbing the mews, boiling hides, and finally, cleaning his privy. That monthly ordeal of privy-scrubbing was the only thing that ever made him regret his decision to move out of the Vale...The last worked; and with a sigh of relief, he headed off to the nearest source of aid he could think of.

"Vree!" he called.

The bondbird dove out of the branches of a nearby tree; he felt the gyre's interest at his burden, but it was purely curiosity. The Changechildthank the stars-was of the wrong species to affect Vree.

If she'd been tervardi, though-she'd have gotten to both of us. And I don't think Vree's as good at self-control as I am. I would truly have had a situation at that point.

"where?" the bondbird replied, with the inflection that meant "Where are we going?"

The hertasi, Vree," he Mindspoke back. "the ones on the edge of k'sheyna. this-one hurt-sleeps."

"Good." Vree's mind-voice was full of satisfaction; the hertasi liked bondbirds and always had tidbits to share with them. He could care less about Darkwind's burden; only that she was a burden, and Darkwind was hindered in his movements. "I guard." Which meant that he would stay within warning distance just ahead of Darkwind, alert at all times, instead of giving in to momentary distractions.

Unae his bondmate...Latrines, he thought firmly. Cleaning out latrines. most part, would start out chasing a helpless-looking old Nera looked up at Darkwind-it was hard for the diminutive hertasi to do anything other than "look up" at a human-his expressive eyes full of questions.

"And what if she wakes?" the Guard Mindspoke. He turned his head slightly, and the scales of the subtle diamond pattern on his forehead shifted from metallic brown to a dark gold like old bronze. Nera was the Elder of the hertasi enclave and an old friend; Darkwind had brought his burden-and problem-straight to Nera's doorstep. Let the mages discount the hertasi if they chose, or ignore them, thinking them no more than children in their understanding and suited only to servants' work.

Darkwind knew better.

"I don't think she will," Darkwind told him honestly. "At least not until I'm back. I risked a probe, and she is very deeply exhausted. I expect her to sleep for a day or more." Nera considered that, his eyes straying to the paddies below, where his people worked their fields of rice. The hertasi settlement itself was in the hillside above a marsh, carefully hollowed out "holes" shored with timbers; with walls, floors and ceilings finished with water-smoothed stone set into cement, and furnished well, if simply. The swamp was their own domain, one in which their size was not a handicap. They grew rice and bred frogs, hunted and fished there. They knew the swamp better than any of the Tayledras.

That had made it easy for Darkwind to persuade the others to include them within the bounds of the k'sheyna territory. The marsh itself was a formidable defense, and the hertasi seldom required any aid. A border section guarded by a treacherous swamp full of clever hertasi was something even the most stubborn mage would find a practical resource.

Though they knew how to use their half-size bows and arrows perfectly well, and even the youngest were trained with their wicked little sickle-shaped daggers and fish-spears, the hertasi preferred, when given the choice, to let their home do their fighting for them. Enemies, for the

lizard-rn2n, only to find themselves suddenly chest-deep and sinking in quicksand or mire.

The hertasi were fond of referring to these unwelcome intruders as fertilizer. ' Nera was still giving him that inquisitive look. Darkwind groaned, inwardly. There were some definite drawbacks to a friendship dating back to childhood. Old Nera could read him better than his own father. thank the gods for that.

The Changechild's attraction didn't work on Nera, any more than it did on Vree-but Darkwind had the feeling that the hertasi knew very well the effect it was having on the scout. And he was undoubtedly giving Darkwind that look because-he assumed the attraction was affecting his thinking as well as-other things.

Darkwind sighed. "All right," he said, finally. "If she wakes and gives YOU trouble, she's fair game for fertilizer. Does that suit you?" Nera nodded, and his flexible mouth turned up at the corners in an approximation of a human smile. "Good. I just wanted to be certain that your mind was still working as well as the rest of you." Darkwind winced. Nera was so small it was easy to forget that the hertasi was actually older than his father, and was just as inclined to remind him of his relative youth. And hertasi, who only came into season once a year, enjoyed teasing their human friends about their susceptibility to their own passions.

It didn't help that this time Nera's arrow hit awfully near the mark.

"I'm still chief scout," he reminded the lizard..Anything that comes out of the Pelagirs is suspect-and if it's helpless and attractive, it's that much more suspect."

"Excellent." Nera bobbed his muzzle in a quick nod. "then give my best to the Winged Ones. Follow the blue-flag flowers; we changed the safe path since last you were here." With that tacit approval, Darkwind again shifted his burden to the ground, this time laying her on a stuffed grass-mat just inside Nera's doorway. When he turned, the hertasi Elder had already rejoined his fellows, and was knee-deep in muddy water, weeding the rice. He might be old, but he had not lost any of his speed. That was how the hertasi, normally shy, managed to stay out of sight so much of the time in the Vale; they still retained the darting speed of that long-ago reptilian ancestor.

Darkwind pushed aside the bead curtain that served as a door during the day, shaded his eyes, and looked beyond the paddies for the first of the blue-flag flowers. The hertasi periodically changed the safe ways through the swamp, marking them with whatever flowering plants were blooming at the time, or with evergreen plants in the winter. After a moment he spotted what he was looking for, and made his way, dry-shod, along the raised paths separating the rice paddies.

Dry-shod only for the moment. When he reached the end of the cultivated fields, he pulled off his boots, meant mostly for protection against the stones and brambles of the dryland, fastened them to his belt, and substituted a pair of woven rush sandals he kept with Nera.

Rolling up the cuffs of his breeches well above his knees, he waded into the muddy water, trying not to think of what might be lurking under it. The hertasi assured him that the plants they rooted along the paths kept away leeches, special fish they released along the safe paths would eat any that weren't repelled by the plants, and that he himself would frighten away any poisonous water snakes, if he splashed loudly enough, but he could never quite bring himself to believe that. It was very hard to read hertasi even when someone knew them well, and it was all too like their sense of humor to have told him these things to try and lull him into complacency.

He could have gone around, of course, but this was the shortest way to get to the other side of the swamp, where the marsh drained off down the side of the crater-wall into the Dhorisha Plains. The swamp, barely within k'sheyna lands, ended at the ruins he sought-and when he had apportioned out the borders, he had made sure that both were within his patrolling area.

One advantage of being in charge; I could assign myself whatever piece I wanted. Dawnfire gets the part facing on the hills that hold her friends, and I get the area that holds mine. Seems fair enough to me.

Normally he didn't have to get there by wading through the swamp.

This was not the route he chose if he had a choice.

The water was warm, unpleasantly so, for so was the heavy, humid air. A thousand scents came to his nostrils, most of them foul; rotting plants, stale water, the odor of fish. He looked back after a while, but the hertasi settlement had completely vanished in waving swamp-plants that stood higher than his head. He thought he felt something slither past his leg, and shuddered, pausing a moment for whatever it was to go by.

Or bite me. Whichever comes first.

But it didn't bite him, and if there had been something there, it didn't touch him again. He waded on, watching for the telltale, pale blue of the tiny, odorless flowers on their long stems, poking up among the reeds. As long as he kept them in sight, he would be on the path the hertasi had built of stone and sand amid the mud of the swamp. There were always two plants, one marking each side of the path. The idea was to stop between each pair and look for the next; while the path itself twisted among the reeds and muck, it was a straight line from one pair of plants to the next. And there were false trails laid; it wasn't a good idea to break away from the set path and take what looked like a more direct route, or a drier one; the direct route generally ended in a bog, and the "dry" one always ended in a patch of quicksand or a sinkhole.

Once again he was sweating like a panicked dyheli, and that attracted other denizens of the swamp. Below the water all might be peaceful, but the hertasi could do nothing about the insects above. Darkwind had rubbed himself with pungent weeds to enhance his race's natural resistance to insects, but blackflies still buzzed about his eyes, and several nameless, nearly invisible fliers had already feasted on his arms by the time he reached dry land again.

There was no warning; the ruins simply began, and the marsh ended.

Darkwind suspected that the marsh had once been a large lake, possibly artificial, and the ruins marked a small settlement or trading village, or even a guard post, built on its shore. If whatever cataclysm had created the Plains had not altered the flow of watercourses hereabouts, he would have been very surprised-and after that, it would have been logical for the lake to silt up and become a swamp. He climbed up on the stones at the edge of the swamp, slapping at persistent insects, vowing silently to take the long way around, on his return.

He looked up to make sure of Vree, and found the bondbird soaring overhead, effortlessly, in the cloud-dotted sky.

Not for the first time, he wished for wings of his own.

"And what would you do with them, little one?" asked a humor-filled mind-voice. "How would you hide and creep, and come unseen upon your enemies, hmm?"

"the same way you do, you old myth," he replied. "From above."

"Good answer," replied Treyvan, and the gryphon dove down out of the sun, to land gracefully on a toppled menhir in a thunderous flurry of backwinging, driving up the dust around him and forcing Darkwind to protect his eyes with his hand until the gryphon had alighted.

"Sssso, what brings you to our humble abode?" Treyvan asked genially, somehow managing to do what the tervardi could not , and force human speech from his massive beak.

"I need advice, and maybe help," Darkwind told him, feeling as small as the hertasi as he looked up at the perching gryphon. Those handclaws, for instance, were half again as wide and long as his own strong hands, and their tips were sheathed in talons as sharp and black as obsidian.

Treyvan jumped down from the stone, and his claws clenched and released reflexively as the gryphon changed its position before him, absentmindedly digging inch-deep furrows into the packed earth.

"Advissse we will alwayss have forrr you, featherlessss sson. Advissse you will take? That iss up to you," Treyvan smiled, gold-tinged crest raising a little in mirth. "Help we will alwaysss give if we can, wanted orrr not.

Darkwind smiled, and stepped forward to grasp the leading edge of the great gryphon's folded wing, and leaned in to run a hand through the spicy-scented neck feathers, seemingly unending in their depth.

"Thank you. Where is Hydona?"

"Sssearrrching for nessst-lining, I would guess." Treyvan let a trace of his pride show through, fluffing his chest feathers and raising his tail-tip.

"So soon? When... when will you make the flight?

"Sssoon, sssoon. You will be able to tellll. Treyvan chuckled at Darkwind's blush, then half-closed his eyes, and Darkwind felt the wing-muscles under his hand relax.

It was easy-very easy-to fall under the hypnotic aura of the gryphon, a state of dreamy relaxation brought on by the feel of the soft, silky feathers, the faintly sweet scent, the deep-rumble of Treyvan's faint purr.

It was the gryphon himself who broke the spell.

"You have need of usss, Darrrkwind," he reminded the scout. The muscles in the wing retensed, and he stood, wings tucked to his side under panels of feathers. "Let usss go to Hydonaaa." He turned and paced regally on a path winding deeper into the ruins.

Darkwind had to hurry to keep up with his companion's ground-eating strides.

The gryphons had arrived here, in these ruins, literally out of the sky one day, when Darkwind was seven or eight. He'd claimed these ruins-then, well within the safe boundaries of k'sheyna territory-as his own solitary playground. There was magic here, a half-dozen ley-lines and a node, but the mages had decreed it safe; tame and unlikely to cause any problems. It was a good place to play, and imagine mysteries to be solved, monsters to conquer, magics to learn.

Watching Treyvan's switching tail, he recalled that day vividly.

He had rounded a corner, the Great Mage investigating possibly dangerous territory and about to encounter a Fearsome Monster, when he encountered a real one.

He had literally walked into Treyvan, who had been watching his antics with some amusement, he later learned. All he knew at the time was that he had turned a corner to find himself face-to-face with-Legs.

Very large legs, ending in very, very large claws. His stunned gaze had traveled upward; up the furry legs, to the transition between fur and feathers, to the feather-covered neck, to the beak.

The very, very, very large, sharp, and wickedly hooked beak.

The beak had opened; it seemed as large as a cave.

"Grrr," Treyvan had said.

Darkwind had turned into a small whirlwind of rapidly pumping arms and legs, heading for the safe-haven of the Vale, and certain, with the surety of a terrified eight-year-old, that he was not going to make it.

Somehow he had; somehow he escaped being pounced on and eaten whole. He had burst into the ekele, babbling of monsters, hundreds, thousands of them, in the ruins. Since he had never been known to lie, his mother and father had set up the alarm, and a small army of fighters and mages had descended on a very surprised---and slightly contrite-pair of gryphons.

Fortunately for all concerned, gryphons were on the list of "friendly, though we have never seen one" creatures all Tayledras learned of some time in their teens. Treyvan apologized, and explained that he and Hydona were an advance party, intending to discover if these lands were safe to live and breed in. They offered their help in guarding k'sheyna in return for the use of the ruins as a nesting ground. The Elders had readily agreed; help as large and formidable as the gryphons was never to be disdained. A bargain was struck, and the party returned home.

But all Darkwind knew was that he was huddling in his parent's ekele, his knife clutched in his hand, waiting to find out if the monsters were descending on his home.

Until his parents returned: unbattered, unbloody, perfectly calm.

And when he'd demanded to know what had happened, his father had ruffled his hair, chuckled, and said, "I think you have a new friend-and he wants to apologize for frightening you." Treyvan had apologized, and that had begun the happiest period of his life; when everything was magical and wondrous, and he had a pair of gryphons to play with.

He hadn't realized it at the time, but it hadn't entirely been play.

Treyvan and Hydona had taught him a great deal of what he knew about scouting and fighting, playing "monster" for him as they later would for their fledglings, teaching him all about dangers he had not yet seen and how to meet them.

Now he knew, though he had not then, that they had chosen the ruins deliberately, for the magic-sources that lay below them. Magic energies were beneficial for gryphon nestlings, giving them an early source of power, for gryphons were mages, too. A different kind of mage than the Tayledras, or other humans; they were instinctive mages, "earth-mages," Hydona said, using the powers about them deftly and subtly for defense and in their mating flights, for without a specific spell, a mating would not be fertile.

That was what Treyvan had meant by "you will know;" when he and Hydona flew to mate for their second clutch, any mage nearby would know very well that a spell with sexual potency was being woven.

The last time they'd risen, he'd been fourteen, and just discovering the wonders of Girls. Fortunately he had been alone, and there had been no Girls within reach...The offspring of that mating were six or seven years old now, fledged, but not flying yet, and still sub-adult.

Pretty little things, he thought to himself, with a chuckle, though the term "little" was relative. They were bigger and stronger than he was.

At fourteen he'd already acquired Vree, and the appearance of the gryphlets hadn't appalled him the way it might have. Vree had looked much scrawnier and-well-awful, right out of the egg. Lytha and Jerven were born alive, and with a reasonable set of fluff-feathers and fur-and Treyvan hadn't let him see them until their second or third day, when their eyes were open and they didn't look quite so unfinished.

The gryphons' nest was very like an ekele, but on the ground, presumably to keep the flightless gryphlets from breaking their necks. The pair had created quite an impressive shelter from stone blocks, cleverly woven vegetation, and carefully fitted logs.

As Darkwind neared it, he realized that it was bigger than it had been; it wasn't until he got close enough to measure it by eye that the difference was apparent. From without it looked almost like a tent made of stone and thatch, with a roof quite thick enough to keep out any kind of weather; it looked very much as if the gryphons had dismantled and rebuilt it, keeping the same shape with an increase in size.

He glanced in the door as Treyvan turned, a look of proprietary pride on his expressive face. Obviously he was waiting for a compliment. Inside, there were three chambers now, instead of the two Darkwind remembered; the fledglings', the adults', and a barren one, which would probably be the new nursery. The other two were basically large nests, piled deep with fragrant grasses that the pair had gathered down on the Plain, and changed periodically.

Treyvan's neck curved gracefully, and he faced his human friend eye to golden eye. "Well?" he demanded. "Whaaat do you think?"

"I think it's magnificent," Darkwind replied warmly-which was all he had time for, as the gryphlets heard and recognized his voice, and came tumbling out of their chamber in a ball of squealing fur-and feathers.

Darkwind was their favorite playmate-or plaything, sometimes he wasn't entirely certain which. But he'd used Treyvan and his mate the same way as a child, so turnabout only seemed fair.

Mostly... they tried to be careful, but they didn't always know their own strength-and they were very young. Sometimes they forgot just how long and sharp their claws and beaks were.

They hit him together, Lytha high, Jerven low, and brought him down, both shrieking in the high-pitched whistles that served the gryphons for howls of laughter.

Darkwind tried not to wince, but those whistles were enough to pierce his eardrums. I'll be glad when their voices deepen. Human children are shrill enough as it is..

Lytha grabbed the front of his tunic in her beak and "worried" it; Jerven "gnawed" his ankle. He struggled; at least they were big enough now that he didn't have to watch what he did; he could fight against them in earnest and not hurt them, provided he didn't indulge in any real, ~g blows. They seemed to have improved in their "playing" since the last time; he'd needed a new tunic when jerven got through with him. Treyvan watched them maul him indulgently for a moment, then waded in, gently separating his offspring from his friend, batting at them so that they rolled into the far corners of the chamber, shrieking happily.

Darkwind did wince.

Treyvan whistled something at them; they bounced to their feet and bounded out the door. Darkwind still wasn't fluent in Gryphon, it was a very tonal language, and hard to master; but he thought it was probably the equivalent of "Go play, Darkwind needs to talk to Mother and Father about things that will bore you to sleep." Treyvan shook his head, then turned, and settled himself into a graceful reclining curve, with his serrated, meat-rending bill even with Darkwind's chin, bare inches away, gazing into the human's face. "Your indulgenssss, old friend. They aaare veeeery young."

"I know," he replied, picking himself up off the floor, and dusting himself off. "I distinctly remember doing the same thing to you." Treyvan's beak opened in a silent laugh. "Aaaah, but I wassss ssstill thissss ssssize, and you were much ssssmaller, yesss? The damagesss were much lessss."

"I think I'll survive them," Darkwind responded. "And I owe you both for more than just being gracious about playing 'monster' for me." Treyvan shook his head. "Weee do not think of sssssuch," he said immediately. "Thissss issss what friendssss do." Darkwind remained stubbornly silent for a moment. "Whether or not you think of it, I do," he said. "You two helped me cope with Mother's death; you've been mother and father to me since. It's not something I can forget." The memory was still painful, but he thought it was healing. It certainly wouldn't have without their help.

"Sssstill," Treyvan objected. "You are uncle to the little onesss. At consssiderable perssonal damage." He shrugged. "To quote your own words," he replied wryly," 'that's what friends do." I think they're well worth indulging. So, you've obviously enlarged the nest-and it's wonderful, the new chamber doesn't look tacked-on, it looks like it was built with the original. What else are you planning to do?"

"We thought, perhapsssss, a chamber for the younglingssss to play in foul weather-" They discussed further improvements for a moment until a shadow passed over Darkwind, and he looked up at the sound of his name whistled in Gryphon-Then once again, he had to protect his eyes, as Hydona, Treyvan's mate, landed in the clearing before the nest, driving up a stronger wind with her wings than Treyvan had.

Darkwind rose to his feet to greet her. She was larger than Treyvan, and her dusty-brown coloration was a muted copy of his golden-brown feathers. There was more gray in her markings, and less black. Her eyes were the same warm, lovely gold as Treyvan's, though, and she was just as pleased to see him as her mate had been.

She nuzzled him and gripped a shoulder gently, purring loud enough to vibrate his very bones. He buried his hands in her neck-feathers and scratched the place at the back of her neck she could never reach herself; the most intimate caress possible to a gryphon, short of mating behavior.

She and Treyvan had been extraordinarily open with him, especially after the death of his mother, allowing him glimpses of their personal life that most humans were never allowed to see. They were, all in all, quite private creatures; of all the Tayledras, only Darkwind was considered an intimate friend. They had not even allowed Dawnfire, who was possibly the best of all the k'sheyna at dealing with nonhumans, to come that close to them.

"Ssssso," Hydona sighed, after a long and luxurious scratch. "Thisss is your patrol time-it musst be busssinesss that bringsss you. And bussinesss isss ssseriousss. How can we help?" Darkwind looked into her brilliant, deep eyes. "I want to ask advice, and maybe some favors," he said. "I seem to have acquired a problem." Hydona's ear-tufts perked up. "Acquired a problem? Interesssting word choicssse. Ssssay on." He chose a comfortable rock, as she curled up beside her mate.

"Well," he began. "It happened this way.